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Unit 15: Ben Jonson: Introduction of the Text

Mosca begins preparing the elaborate funeral, he ceases to acknowledge his former master. As the Notes
heir to Volpone’s great wealth, Mosca is transformed in the eyes of the courtroom judges—who are
as self-serving as the rest—from a lowly servant into an eligible young man to whom they might
marry their daughters.

Illustrate that volpone is a rogue whose victims trap themselves by their own
weaknesses.
Desperate not to be outfoxed by his servant, Volpone reveals himself, thus exposing his own and
everyone else’s guilt. He is stripped of his wealth, which is given to charity, and sentenced to prison,
while Mosca is condemned to the galleys for passing himself off as a person of breeding. Voltore,
the advocate, is debarred from the court and Corbaccio’s wealth is transferred to his son Bonario.
Corvino is paraded through Venice as an ass, while his wife Celia is sent home to her family with
triple her dowry.
Jonson skillfully manipulates the audience so that it identifies with Volpone and his brazen schemes.
The old magnifico’s zest is infective and the audience is swept along with his machinations only to
find itself, along with the anti-hero, hovering at the edge of criminality. In this way, the author tries
to confront us with the dangers of unrestrained self-interest and with what Jonson considers to be a
necessary sense of social responsibility.

One element of Volpone that comes from classical (specifically Roman) drama is
the theme of legacy hunting.

The unities of time and place in Volpone also come from classical drama. The unity of time requires
that the events of the plot occur over no more than one 24-hour day. The unity of place requires that
the action occur in only one setting. To what extent does Volpone observe each of these unities?
The third classical unity, called unity of action, requires that a play develop one and only one plot.
Volpone does not observe unity of action, however, because it has both a main plot and a subplot.
The main plot concerns Volpone’s gulling (tricking) of the legacy hunters.

15.4 Text as a Comedy

Comedy of Humor

The comedy of humours is comedy based on the exaggeration of the greek explantaion for health—
the body was balanced by the four humours black bile, yellow bile/cholor, blood and phlegm. If
any of these were out of balance, the body and the personality were influenced.
Volpone is lustful—sin of meloncholia (too much black bile) and decietful—sin of sanguine (too
much blood) Mosca is covetous—sin of choloric (too much cholor/yellow bile)
In ancient and medieval medicine, it was believed that the four basic fluids of the body (blood,
phlegm, choler/yellow bile, melancholy/black bile) directly affect a person’s physical condition,
and these fluids were called humors. When the humors are in a balanced state, the person will
remain in a good temper. If, any of the humors gets imbalanced, the person also becomes abnormal
physically and psychologically. For example, dominance of blood makes human sanguine (happy,
generous), phlegm makes human phlegmatic (cowardly, pale), choler makes choleric (hot tempered,
impatient, vindictive), black bile makes pensive, sentimental, melancholic.

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